I was merging my truck onto a major road last night and didn't see anyone, but using my cycling instincts turned my head, slowed down and triple checked. Then I noticed a shadow of a prius HB exactly where I was merging WITHOUT ANY LIGHTS. His passenger must have been grateful my rider's clairvoyance avoided crushing her. I tried to get the clueless newbie driver with thick glasses attention for several blocks, but he never turned his lights on. The experience makes me not want to ride at night.
No offense to anyone that drives a Prius, but I think they are some of the worst drivers on the road. I don't know what it is but I have had more problems with Prius' out there.
A clip from the best show EVER made in history, Curb Your Enthusiasm:
Larry David and his manager Jeff Green are driving in Larrys Prius:
Larry: *waves to another Prius driver in passing* Did you see that? He didn't wave back.
Jeff: So?
Larry: So? He was driving a Prius too, he should wave back.
Jeff: I don't wave at people that drive the same car as me.
Larry: Yeah, but we're Prius drivers. We're a special breed.
Slightly paraphrased.
If you don't know the show, he uses it to make fun of a lot of stuff and I'm sure he was just pointing out the mentality of Prius drivers.
"According to the Los Angeles Times, that's part of the problem. In a tongue-in-cheek editorial last September, the LA Times suggests, "While SUV drivers can be irritating behind the wheel, Prius owners can be irritating once they get out of the car.""
(See Southpark episode on the Prius)
I have nothing against the car at all. Or the drivers. I just find other people's observations hilarious.
I'm very glad so many folks are driving Prius. Their growing accident injury statistics WILL motivate driver safety training and vehicle regulations to make the roads safer for motorcyclists! Next time you see a small car please wave your gratitude.
My close call last night, reminds me how many drivers are incompetent. Small cars like motorcycles, although very responsive in handling, do not accommodate mistakes without high risk of injury. The difference is most motorcycle drivers respect this risk and receive extra defensive training to drive attentively and are ATGATT. Cagers need much better training.
The US needs tiered licensing for both cages and bikes. Everyone start with lightweight small displacement vehicles and after proving their competence move up. Multiple tickets/accidents would again limit the driver to a prius or kawi-250R to reduce their danger to others.
I wonder if this blame can be laid flat on the driver. for Ex. the dash panel design of my Odyssey is such that it induces this problem if you don't use auto lights on\off. The reason, they foolishly designed the panel lights to be on all the time with only a small icon to indicate that your lights are on. Now in the old days you knew your lights were off when you looked at the panel and it's completely dark... I wonder if the Prius is designed the same, I know a lot of cars are this way with LCD panels, etc.
Or you can just leave them on all the time if your car/truck has an auto off feature. The Tacoma shuts down all lights when the door is opened and key removed.
My observations of Prius drivers is they tend to go exageratedly slow, probably watching their MPG gauge... "I'm getting 40 mpg doing 65!" Well, my 919 averages 43mpg, now get out of my way!
Commuting from Malibu to Long Beach, the largest (in more ways than one!) class of vehicle I see is humongous SUVs with one person in them talking on a cell phone and weaving slightly. However, the single most common car is the Prius. One odd thing about them is they all seem to max out at 74 MPH: the gas mileage probably takes a major dip past that, and not one of them will give me any room to get past them in the carpool lane. Actually, I had to carefully look at my speedo to know this -- generally I regulate my speed by the tach: 5200 RPM won't get you a ticket while 5500 will, and I find myself berating cars in the fast lane by saying "4500 is too damn slow! Move over!", then I give it a quick nudge past 6303 RPM (I leave it to you to figure the significance of this).
Thanks buddy! If I didn't ride a bike (with its defensive training) it would have been a bad accident.
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